I’ve always had a solitary side. Music is a fascinating hobby because it unites introverts and extroverts alike. Everyone has their own preferred environments to enjoy music. Whether you like to go out and rock it at a show with your buds, or whether you like to listen to a record alone with the headphones on, music unites us.
There is a certain amount of joy in both ways of life. Ultimately, most people experience music in a mixture of both settings.
Some of my happiest memories were spent with music, by myself, with nothing but my thoughts and feelings. When I’d get a new album, typically the first thing I’d do was go up to my room, close the door, and rip off the cellophane. Hit “play”! I’d read the lyrics, the liner notes, and study the artwork. Then, after a heavy dose of rocking, I’d emerge to tell anyone who’d listen how awesome the album was. That would often be my sister (usually uninterested). Or, if it was a special occasion like Christmas, and the album was a gift, I would go downstairs to tell my gift-giver how much I loved it. That’s how many first listens went down in my house.
I liked to keep my brain occupied while listening to music. If I wasn’t studying the lyrics or artwork, perhaps I was reading a book. Or doing homework. Or drawing. Or going through my growing stack of Hit Parader magazines, looking for pictures and info.
I’d allow myself a few minutes of air guitar when a favourite song came on. Just drop what I was doing, and hit those air-strings. Give it my all; burn off some energy. Or perhaps I’d pretend I was Bruce Dickinson, fronting Iron Maiden at Long Beach Arena.
I was generally left alone. Sometimes my sister would have a comment about the music blasting from behind my closed door. “There was one really good song,” she might say if I was playing Poison or Warrant. If it were Priest or Maiden she’d complain, “All I could hear is screaming”.
In 1988 I got my first guitar. Periodically I would attempt to pick along to songs, but that was a futile endeavour. I may as well have been playing air guitar. A few years later, my sister got a pair of drum sticks with her VHS copy of Wayne’s World. I would steal them and attempt to drum along to albums. Poorly.
The kind of experiences that I had with music in solitude in my room were rarely equalled in a group setting. My best friend Bob and I would play music and discuss it, while drawing pictures or writing stories. That was the kind of thing I enjoyed most. “Listen to this cool part, I wonder how he does that,” one of us would say mid-song. “What did he say there?” was one common remark. “I have no idea,” was usually the answer.
Treasured memories. But a lot of that time with Bob was actually enhanced by our separate listening times alone. When we met up on weekends, we were ready to show each other something cool we had heard, or had drawn. Perhaps I had some new theories about Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son concept that I had to share with him. The times we spent alone in our bedrooms listening to albums prepared us for the times listening together. We had specific things we liked and wanted to share. It was always nice when one of us got the other into a band. He got me into so many, the last of which was probably Extreme.
When the CD began supplanting the cassette in my life, I added another activity to my solo listening sessions. I still liked to have a cassette copy for portability once I started buying CDs. So I made cassette copies of all my CDs, so I could listen to them in the car or on a Walkman. (I did not get a Discman for quite a few years, as I did not trust them to keep my discs unscratched.) Many happy hours were spent making cassette covers for my CD dubs. I got better and better at it over the years, but sometimes making the cover was as simple as sketching a logo and neatly writing all the song titles down.
While I have had some amazing times singing at the top of my lungs gathered with best friends and associated buddies, some of the best times were spent listening alone!
The last time I went to see a movie, it was a V.I.P. experience and I had never heard the word “coronavirus” in my life. This time was starkly different but enjoyable in its own way.
I’ve been wanting to see a movie in this pandemic ever since Tenet hit theaters in 2020, but that was before vaccines and many people were not ready to be back in cinemas yet. 2021 is different, and I’ve been enjoying stores and dinners out once again. Time to go see a movie! Eternals it is! Now I’m completely caught up in the MCU, just in time for Spiderman: No Way Home!
Eternals hasn’t been doing well, and for a Sunday matinee all that was available was the standard 2D showing. (I could identify scenes that looked like important bits were cropped out from the Imax aspect ratio.) My original intent was to see the movie with our friend Vu, but he’s a busy pharmacist and at the last minute, could not get away. I was already at the theater, so I went ahead and bought my ticket. Morning show: less than eight bucks! Occupany: I was one of five people total!
I got comfortable in my seat; with the nearest person many rows away, I felt more comfortable than I’ve ever felt in a movie theater. Not a sound from the others (not even a laugh at the funny scenes) and absolutely no distractions. I don’t think I’ve ever had that experience in the cinemas before. As per cinema rules, I was also masked for two and a half hours with no difficulty whatsoever. In fact my usually cold nose was very happy to be masked.
I usually look forward to the trailers, but all I saw was shit. Morbius looks awful and the fan-service trailer feels like a promotional clip for more than one movie. I grew impatient. Bring on the Eternals.
ETERNALS (2021 Marvel) Directed By Chloé Zhao
I really wanted to like the Eternals. Just days ago I acquired the last Eternals action figure of the ten: Ajak, Salma Hayek’s character, healer and leader of the team. She was a Walmart exclusive. More like Walmart “elusive”! The designs of the costumes, with unique colours for each character, were intriguing. With all ten characters in hand, I was familiar with all their names and powers.
There’s Thena, Angelina Jolie’s goddess of war who can manifest blades and shields. Gilgamesh (Don Lee), the powerhouse with a mighty punch. Sprite (Lia McHugh), the master of illusions and storytelling, trapped in a child’s body. Druig (Barry Keoghan), the brooding controller of minds. Kingo (Kumail Nanjiani), a star of the silver screen who can fire bursts of energy from his hands. The master of technology, Phastos (Bryan Tyree Henry), can create devices of great power and ingenuity with his mind. Makkari (Lauren Ridloff) is the speedster and seemingly much faster than Quicksilver himself. She’s also deaf and signs with her teammates. Ikaris (Richard Madden), upon whom the legend of Icarus is based, is perhaps the most powerful, with strength, flight, and cosmic energy eyebeams. Finally there is Sersi (Gemma Chan), the actual central hero of the film, who can convert any non-sentient matter into anything else. Air to water, earth to wood, her choice. They have been here for 7000 years, shaping our history and becoming our heroes of ancient legend.
That’s a lot of characters, and doesn’t include the underused Dane Whitman (Kit Harrington), Sersi’s boyfriend and spinoff setup device. Kingo’s valet Karun (Harish Patel) has more screentime than the future Black Knight. Dane’s lineage is briefly hinted at, and the Ebony Blade mentioned, before being revealed in a post-credit scene that we’ll discuss later. The point is, Whitman is not important to the story. He begins as the “regular person” perspective character that we can relate to, as the strangeness unfolds. But then he disappears and only at the end do we cynically realize his true purpose: MCU world building.
It wouldn’t be a Marvel movie without some deus ex machina to boot — or maybe characters just like to wait until the last possible minute before revealing their presence? That said, Ikaris does know how to make an entrance.
Many of the characters are quite delightful. One feels for the relationship between Thena and Gilgamesh; one the sick and one the caretaker. Poor Sprite feels cursed as a 7000 year old child who can never age, never to know love or even what it feels like to be treated as an equal. Phastos, the master of technology, is haunted by his past. He thought aiding humans to develop new sources of energy would help their society advance. As he stood in the ashes of Hiroshima, he realized how wrong he was. He has retreated to an anonymous family life with a husband and a son. Thena, wonderfully portrayed by Jolie, has the equivalent of Space Alzheimers, lashing out in violence in fitful rages of memory loss.
Other characters go undeveloped. I loved watching the speedy heroics of Makkari (Mercury), the girl with attitude, but never get a feel for her character otherwise. Kingo is the entertainer, loving the spotlight and admiration of humans. He displays wisdom, insight and his own unique perspective on events, but we never really get a feeling for what makes him tick.
Then there is Druig, the intriguing Eternal who can control minds. With a thought, he could end all war on Earth, but he is forbidden from interfering. Forbidden by who?
The complex story of love, deception, legend, history and family takes two and a half hours to unfold. It is told in the form of flashbacks and exposition, lots of exposition. The initial cover story is that the Eternals were sent to Earth to protect intelligent life from predators called Deviants. That turned out to be a lie, but they are forbidden from interfering in human affairs unless Deviants are involved. This comes right down from those that created both Eternals and Deviants: the Celestials. The Deviants were their mistake, and the Eternals are the correction.
Again, a lot to sort out in under one movie. So in sum: 11 new characters (including Whitman), and three new factions. Sort of new.
We’ve seen Celestials before in the Marvel universe: giant beings of immense power. Peter Quill’s dad Ego the Living Planet said he was a Celestial. The space colony of Knowhere was built in the severed head of a giant Celestial. The ultimate villain of Eternals is Arishem, a planet-sized Celestial who helps creation continue in the universe. Celestials create new suns and life in the universe. meanwhile, new Celestials are born in the heart of planets and feed on the life energy of intelligent beings like humans. And it just so happens that a new Celestial named Tiamut is about to be born right in the middle of our Earth. We die so that the Celestials can continue to create new life. It’s a cycle.
And it also turns out that the Eternals are not the protectors of humans that we assumed. They were only to protect them until such time as the new Celestial growing inside Earth had absorbed enough life energy. This happened after the “Blip”, the moment in Avengers: Endgame when half of life in the universe was restored with the Infinity Stones. Now some of the Eternals have grown so attached to humanity that they don’t want to fulfill their purpose. They want to stop the destruction of the Earth. Others cannot imagine disobeying their Celestial masters. As you can imagine, this boils down to an Eternal vs. Eternal showdown at the end.
Any battle scene with the Eternals in this film has merit. Since each character has their own power, they find creative ways to use them in concert together. Unfortunately, the Deviants (who are being sold as the main villains but are really a just side threat) are not very interesting foes. They look like Bayformers from one of the really bad Transformers films; all sinewy with tentacles that seem to defy physics. Generic and uninteresting to look at. One of the Deviants learns how to steal powers from Eternals and becomes a new threat. We’re never really told why he can do this, but he does, and he evolves.
With the battle lines drawn, two groups of Eternals fight. Needless to say the do-gooders trying to save the Earth, led by Sersi, are triumphant. However the planet’s surface itself is scarred by the near-emergence of Tiamut the Celestial, and this will undoubtedly be referenced in Marvel movies and shows in Phase 4. Our heroes and villains split up and go their separate ways. A defeated Ikaris flies into the sun, almost like his mythical counterpart. A small group take their triangular spaceship the Domo to go look for more Eternals. And they find one almost immediately, in the mid-credit scene! Patton Oswalt fans will like this, and what it could mean for the future.
In a clunky but hype-worthy post credit scene, Kit Harrington reveals his family’s cursed blade, but before touching it, is asked by an offscreen voice if he’s really ready for it. Of course we know he will be, in whatever spinoff he appears. But what really matters is who the offscreen voice is. Thanks to director Chloé Zhao, we know it was a guy who’s kind of an expert on blades. Welcome to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Blade (Mahershala Ali)!
Zhao’s knack for an outdoor scene made this Marvel movie seem bigger than any before it. The cosmic themes with a grounded Earth setting helped the movie stay accessible. At all times, our characters feel like humans. Her direction provides a visual feast, as well as human characters.
But it’s congested. While not fast paced, it feels like characters and concepts are rushed. Who is Phastos, who is Kingo? Let’s find out more about them. What has Sprite been doing all these centuries? Are Druig and Makkari ever going to hook up, and if so, why has it taken them 7000 years? Seriously, you could do an entire film on Druig and what he could have been up to, building strange utopias in the jungle. Makkari looks like she’s been on a hell of a lot of adventures, plus she can read a book in seconds. Let’s find out more about her, please.
Nitpick: in the film, Dane Whitman asks why the Eternals didn’t try to stop Thanos or anything else that’s happened in the MCU. I would also ask where the other Marvel heroes are when a giant head and hand start to emerge from the ocean. Where’s that beeper to Captain Marvel at a time like this? (Granted, she had to go somewhere pretty urgently at the end of the last Marvel movie, perhaps excusing herself from helping out in this film.)
Following so closely behind the truly Marvel-ous Shang-Chi, Eternals feels like an unfortunate misfire. The proof will be how it goes in rewatches. Two or three years down the road, it might be better appreciated. Or, it might be seen as an unfortunate corporate launchpad for new characters and concepts in the MCU. Those who enjoy the cosmic side of the universe, as seen in Guardians of the Galaxy and Loki, will delight in the massive Celestials, very well executed on screen. Could this all be priming our senses up for the eventual arrival of Galactus in Phase Five? Just speculation of course, but it seems more than possible.
See Eternals, but maybe do some research on the characters first before you go in completely dry.
3/5 stars
On my way out, I said “screw it, I’m getting some popcorn”. I didn’t have any during the film having just had an early lunch. I buttered it extra heavy and brought it home with me.
RECORD STORE TALES #953: The Moment I Dumped Conspiracy Theories
With a lot more free reading time on hand after quitting the Record Store, I dove back into one of my favourite childhood topics: UFOs.
It was Canadian nuclear physicist Stanton T. Friedman who re-convinced me there was something legitimate about the subject. Described as a “genius” by those who knew him, Friedman spent 50 years as a ufologist. He often said, “Most sightings can be easily explained. We’re not interested in those.” His point being there is a small but baffling number of contenders, that have yet to be fully debunked. I began buying up his books, and found his stance as a “facts and figures” man quite convincing. He was quite convinced that the United States and other governments had engaged in a “cosmic watergate” to cover up certain unexplained events. He went to great lengths to find and verify documents in US archives, going so far as to find out if certain typewriters were used in certain offices. If they were not, then the document was a forgery and he discarded it. He put a tremendous amount of time into his research. After seeing him speak in a documentary called Out of the Blue, I was intrigued.
I bought every book by Friedman that I could get my hands on. To balance it out, I also read The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. It is important to read the view of the sceptic, but even so I thought Carl overlooked some things. Then I bought Jesse Ventura’s book called American Conspiracies, which expanded the field into JFK, 9/11 and more. Only one chapter on UFOs, but Ventura’s experiences were interesting at least. Finally, I misguidedly bought a highly reviewed book by Richard Hoagland and Mike Bara in which they presented for evidence a number of photos of “glass domes” on the moon. Suddenly and unwittingly, I had crossed the Conspiracy Threshold.
The Conspiracy Theshold is the line between the conceivable and the asinine. It’s subjective, but exists for all who delve into the world of conspiracies, just as certain and invisible as the air in their lungs. Much like the line between clever and stupid, it is a fine line that differs from person to person. Glass domes on the moon was way, way past my threshold.
What happens if you go further? In my experience, all conspiracies eventually flow to a weird, apocalyptic religious end. How far you go is up to you, but that’s where all roads lead. For example, when I followed UFO conspiracies too far on the way to the top…Barack Obama ended up a being satanist lizard alien.
Q Anon are now the latest who believe in lizard aliens. Cool story. Hey, you know what, I saw “V” as a kid too.
There are variations of the lizard alien theory, with the Queen, the Pope, the Clintons and the wealthiest families in the world all secretly running things in their lizardly ways. You’ve heard of the Bilderbergers? They’re the head honchos, when it’s not the military-industrial complex or the Pentaverate. They’re all aliens, demons or both. It’s a fine line — some who believe that the concept of aliens violates the Bible say that aliens and demons are the same thing. Whatever the finer nuances of a given conspiracy theory, this is where they all lead, if you follow the breadcrumbs all the way.
By that time you’ve either realized you’ve gone too far and need to take a step back, or you’re too far gone to be reasoned with. Not surprisingly, today’s “Pandemic Conspiracies” ultimately take you back to…lizard people and the End of Days. Go far enough down the rabbit hole and eventually you become the rabbit.
These people have sucked the fun out of conspiracy theories. With just a hint of sadness, I for one will never travel that aisle of the bookstore again.
The internet (otherwise known as the “information superhighway” or “the weeb”) was just beginning to enter public consciousness in 1995. Hollywood struck while the iron was hot with Hackers, a pretty shitty movie starring Johnny Lee Miller, Matthew Lillard, and Angelina Jolie.
I saw Hackers in the fall of ’95 at a drive-in. It was so bad that when the film broke partway through the movie, I didn’t even care. “I want to see the rest of the movie!” complained my girlfriend in the other seat. She was mad; she didn’t want a refund, she wanted to see Hackers. They eventually got the movie back up and running, for what it was worth. We mocked the corny dialogue about “14400 BPS modems” and terrible visuals. “That isn’t what the internet looks like!” She was right.
The only lasting impact the movie had was its CD soundtrack, which was still in demand six months later. Featuring the Prodigy, Orbital, and Underworld among others, Hackers was popular with the growing electronica crowd. It was also hard to find used, and expensive new.
As discussed in Record Store Tales #795: A Case for Security, CD theft was a major issue for local stores in the mid-90s. There was a roving gang of thieves called the “Pizza Guys”* who ripped off CDs from major chains and then sold them all over town. The cops were aware of the situation, and instructed us to keep buying from them so they could collect evidence. We followed their instructions and they had pages and pages and pages of information on these guys. What they sold, where, and when — and what ID they were using.
Nobody liked dealing with those guys. They were rude, and drew attention to themselves with the massive amounts of new releases they were selling — multiple copies. They were cocky and got bolder week by week. But not as bold as the rookie employee dubbed “The Boy that Killed Pink Floyd”.
He wanted the Hackers soundtrack. He wasn’t willing to pay new prices and he had his name in the computer for a used one. Then he got a bright idea. He didn’t “ask” the Pizza Guys for a copy. He just made it really obvious that he wanted one.
One day when we were buying CDs off the Pizza gang, the kid asked, “No Hackers in here, eh?”
A few visits later, the gang was back. Entering the store, one of the leaders smiled, nodded and simply said “Hackers!” He had somehow acquired a copy, and even acknowledged the request. I don’t know how our kid didn’t get fired for that one. The boss was not impressed! He finally got his walking papers after special ordering an expensive Pink Floyd CD single, deciding he didn’t want it, and putting it on the shelves to sell as a used item. That was the end of the Boy Who Killed Pink Floyd!
Special thanks to Jennifer Ladano for telling me to write this story down!
RECORD STORE TALES #951: Set Your VCR! It’s 1986 and KISS Meets The Phantom Is On Tonight!
When thinking back about my earliest rock and roll discoveries, it’s important to recall the order in which I got the albums, or first heard the tunes. It seems like I had always known “Rock N’ Roll all Nite”, but since my first Kiss albums were Alive! and Hotter Than Hell, those were the songs I knew best. And I barely knew them! I got my first Kiss in September of ’85. But I was learning slowly. Eventually I’d get Asylum, and gradually tape Kiss albums from my neighbour George.
Something else happened that exposed me to Kiss in a new way, that I sometimes forget about. It was the first time I saw Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park.
Everybody knew about Kiss Meets the Phantom, but few of us were old enough to have seen it. When it showed up in the TV guide one week, on some Buffalo station, it seemed like every kid with access to a VCR set it to record. It was being shown at something like 1:00 in the morning on a Sunday.
Upon waking, I got my sister up early and we raced downstairs to watch. We did not have time to watch the whole thing that morning. It was winter, possibly the tail end of Christmas holidays, and we were off to the lake for one day. We watched some, went to the lake, had lunch at the Embassy, and came home to finish the movie.
I noticed there were far more ads to fast forward through on late night TV than during the day!
Actual ads from the actual tape of the actual night.
My sister recalls liking Kiss Meets the Phantom; my memories are quite different. I was bored to tears any time Kiss wasn’t on screen, and you had to wait through, like, an hour (with ads) for Kiss to arrive at the bloody park! I didn’t know who this Anthony Zerbe fellow was, but at age 13 I considered him possibly the worst actor I had ever seen.
It was my first time seeing Peter Criss on video and not just still photos, and I was surprised at his voice. I told everyone, “Peter Criss sounds like Aquaman.” I had the show right, but the character wrong. Michael Bell did the voice of Peter Criss in Kiss Meets the Phantom, and Wonder Twin Zan in the cartoon Superfriends. Legend has it that this was because Peter didn’t show up to loop his lines in post-production. Whatever the case, it led to a different urban legends: that Peter Criss had given up rock and roll, and taken up a lucrative career as a cartoon voice actor!
I thought Gene’s distorted voice was tiresome after a while, and Paul seemed the coolest. My sister liked that Kiss were like superheroes with powers. On the other hand, I didn’t like that. If Paul Stanley couldn’t shoot a laser beam out of his eye in real life, I didn’t understand why he would in this movie. They were still Kiss, still playing the same Kiss songs, but also super-powered. My rigid brain couldn’t reconcile the two.
As for the music, the movie contains several songs that I heard for the very first time that day. “Beth” (acoustic, no less), “Shout It Out Loud”, “God of Thunder” and “I Stole Your Love”. (“Rip and Destroy” doesn’t count.) Now, because I didn’t know these songs, and there were no captions, I had to guess at the titles. “Shout It Out Loud” was the easy one. But these were the live versions taken from Alive II, fast and reckless. Not to mention we were hearing it on a TV with mono speaker; state of the art for the time, but not for proper music listening. So that’s why, for that day at least, I thought “God of Thunder” was “Not a Doctor”, and “I Stole Your Love” was something that sounded like “I Ho-Jo-Ho”.
The process of discovering Kiss was so memorable because it’s so fun. The superhero character aspect appealed to my sister and there’s no denying that it had something to do with why I loved Kiss too. But hearing the songs and albums for the first time can only happen once. And I can clearly remember a tinge of sadness when I finally acquired Rock and Roll Over, the last original Kiss album I needed to finish my collection. I was starkly aware that I was having this experience for the last time: hearing a classic Kiss album, guessing who was singing the songs by the title alone, and discovering hidden favourites. As I learned when Crazy Nights came out, hearing a new Kiss album was simply not the same as discovering the classics!
Kiss Meets the Phantom was a struggle to sit through then, but fortunately I saw it at an age when Kiss still seemed larger than life. Objectively, it is a pretty terrible film, best enjoyed as a trainwreck. The best parts are the concert scenes, which was the closest I got to seeing Kiss live at age 13. It was my first exposure to some really important songs even if I wondered why Gene was singing about being “Not a Doctor”!
Always nice to repost a seasonal classic. Enjoy this Halloween tale.
RECORD STORE TALES Part 241: Halloween, KISS style!
Our annual inventory count fell on October 31. For five years straight, I never got to dress up, hand out candy, or do anything fun on Halloween because I was too busy counting discs and CD towers! However in the early days, this wasn’t the case. Halloween 1996 was actually a pretty good one.
Like most malls, ours had a few Halloween contests. T-Rev entered the store in the Pumpkin Carving category. He and I came up with the plan to do a Kiss pumpkin. T-Rev, the store owner’s brother, and myself gathered in my mom’s workshop in the basement. My mom had plenty of paint, and I was good at drawing the Kiss makeup designs. T-Rev had the idea to make the pumpkin Gene Simmons, and figured out how to make a pumpkin tongue stick out. I must say he did an amazing job.
The first step was to spray paint the pumpkin white. One of the guys did the cutting. Then, I drew the Demon design with a black magic marker. We thought the nose needed to be more three-dimensional, so I cut it out a bit. Together, we began colouring in Gene’s makeup. We needed something to define the eyes of Gene, and T-Rev thought of using pumpkin seeds. We added a wig, and voila!
T-Rev propped Gene up on the magazine stand outside the store. Immediately we started getting compliments, and the response was pretty unanimous: We had done the best job in the entire mall.
Unfortunately, the judges didn’t base their ratings on who had done the best job. They were only marking the results, whether the store employees did the pumpkins themselves or not! A store that hired a professional carver won first place. We came in second. There was no prize for second. T-Rev and I considered that to be cheating. Cheatie-cheatertons.
The contest was over, and not too soon: the pumpkin had begun to rot, as pumpkins do. That didn’t stop a customer from coming in on November 1st and offering him $10 for it. T-Rev accepted his gracious offer, even though the thing would be turning horrific in a day or two. A fool and his money, right T-Rev?
By 1997, the store had moved out of the mall. This was our last pumpkin carving contest, but at least we had the satisfaction of winning the popular vote. As far as I’m concerned, we went out on top. My personal consolation prize was later on, Halloween 2006. By this time I had moved on to United Rentals. They took Halloween very, very seriously at United Rentals! I dressed up as Paul Stanley, and this time, I finally won first prize!
I felt like writing again, I hope you don’t mind. My emails are not the esteemed A Life in Letters by Isaac Asimov, but it’s more about the process of the writing for me.
I’ve been listening to Van Halen in the car a lot. Long story short: I’ve been having issues with my music hard drive in the car, with it repeating tracks. I discovered I could fix it by formatting the drive and starting over. Certain Van Halen albums used to give me issues in the car, with the repeating songs. It’s been a pleasure to rock to King Edward this week. It’s hard to believe but he died over a year ago now.
I remember coming home from work the day he died and I was just in a foul mood. Not only was I grieving Edward Van Halen, but I felt stupid for grieving someone I never met and never hoped to meet. It was a torrent of shitty feelings, plus I hadn’t eaten properly. It was a Tuesday and I had to do laundry or something, and I snapped at Jen. I felt like an asshole afterwards. I also remember telling you this story, and you were the one who said it was OK to be grieving. Until that moment I didn’t really consider that maybe you don’t have to be a psycho to be upset about Van Halen’s death.
Music aside — which was usually warm, fun with instrumental and occasional lyrical depth — Van Halen meant a lot to me. I must have been 13 years old when I was sitting on the porch with my best friend Bob, hearing 1984 on the tape deck for the first time. My dad came home from work, heard the noise and asked what we were listening to, as dads often did. “Van Halen!?” he said. “Sounds like some kind of tropical disease!”
My dad was always good with one liners! When we watched music videos on Much, he would mock the singers shrieking their best operatic screams. “What’s wrong with that man? Should he go to the hospital? He sounds like he’s in pain!”
Good memories, all. I’m very attached to those childhood memories. I’m trying to commit them all to writing before they’re gone. Often, lost memories can be triggered by an old photograph. But there are many things I wish I had video of! If only there was a tape or photograph of that first time I heard Van Halen. But film was a precious commodity until the last 15 years or so. You didn’t just take pictures of you and your friends listening to music on the front porch.
I remember some of the tapes, and conversations. Iron Maiden’s Maiden Japan was popular in our porch listening sessions. George would come over from next door, and Bob would come over with his tapes. My house was right in the middle! I wonder how much of my happiest childhood memories are due to geographic concerns. If my house wasn’t right there in the middle of everybody, maybe I never would have been there that day to hear Van Halen or Iron Maiden.
Sometimes I worry that I spend too much time living in the past and trying to recapture those moments. But then I think about what you would say to that. “Why are you worried about something that brings you happiness?” I think you might ask. And you’d be right. So bring on the Van Halen. Bring on the Iron Maiden. Let’s party like it’s 1985. Might as well go for a soda — nobody hurts, nobody dies.
RECORD STORE TALES #949: My Music at Work (2006-2007)
None of my jobs since quitting the Record Store have been musical in nature. Dealing in steel pipe and accounts payable were boring by comparison, but everywhere I go, I bring music with me.
For a brief while I was working at Novocol Pharmaceuticals. They make the stuff that freezes your teeth so the dentist can do his work. It was pretty wild; I had a lab coat and a cubicle. One day I heard music drifting in. I got out of my chair and wandered around. I realized that the music was coming from the phone.
Many offices have phones that can play a radio station piped in. A little mono speaker, but better than nothing. It was the first music I had in the workplace since quitting the store. CHYM FM became my nemesis as time went on, but for the moment, I was glad to have music again. James Blunt, Rod Stewart, and a lot of “Bad Day” by Daniel Powter. Remember Daniel Powter?
I was at Novocol for a few weeks, and then I had an opportunity at United Rentals where I spent over a year of some of the best work days I ever had. United was a very special place and I’m glad I got to experience it. I made many friends there, and once again, they had the phone radios set to CHYM.
At United, we had a big back room with 8-10 computers for us to enter invoices. When we started the room was full. And I made myself known as the music guy when Rod Stewart came on the radio, as I spoke up to sing his praises. It was the first good song all day. Probably “Downtown Train”. That station only played one or two songs per artist, unless that artist was Beyonce.
“Right on, Rod Stewart!” I announced to the room. “Great song!”
The immediate response from one of the younger girls in the room was “Who’s Rod Stewart?”
I feigned shock. “Who’s Rod Stewart!? The guy with the spikey hair! You know ‘Reason to Believe’, ‘Have I Told You Lately’, ‘Rhythm of my Heart’, ‘Tonight’s the Night’…no?”
No. They did not.
I put up with CHYM for a long time, but one day somebody changed the radio station to Dave FM, the local rock station. All of a sudden, Bon Jovi and Quiet Riot at work were a mainstay. Even Judas Priest. “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin'”. Hearing that at work, a band that I was not allowed to play back in the Record Store days, it was awesome. Just awesome. Here I was in an Accounts Payable office, listening to music I liked better than what I was allowed to play at the store.
The boss poked his nose in the door. “Hey, is that Quiet Riot? I used to love Quiet Riot!” I was the only one in the room who knew what he was talking about. He was a good boss; he helped me get my current job.
“Lick It Up” would thump from that little mono speaker. It was still better than whatever I was allowed to listen to when I worked in an actual music store. The only times I played Kiss there were the occasions no bosses were around, and I was confident I wouldn’t get caught. If I was working at an out-of-town store like Oakville, I would play forbidden bands like Kiss and Iron Maiden. I knew nobody would be popping in for a surprise visit.
Not everybody was happy with the music at United. One lady, a couple years older than me, liked CHYM.
United closed their Kitchener office in 2007 and moved operations to the US. Employees were being shed slowly, and in the latter days there were only three of us left in the back room. There was an older lady, a younger one, and me. Two of us loved the music that Dave FM played, one of us claimed it caused headaches. No matter how low the volume was.
“How can you listen to this? It’s just noise,” she would complain.
She wasn’t even that much older than me. Four years tops. But after having Rhianna and Kelly Clarkson forced upon us for a year, my sympathy was not high. I offered to bring in some CDs from home that I thought everyone would like. I chose The Cars. Turns out I was the only Cars fan. We stuck to the radio and Dave FM.
Because the office was closing, we were all looking for new jobs. We were trying to be supportive of each other, but I noticed that the one older lady that didn’t like rock music was starting to become a little difficult to bear. She’d always been like a motherly figure, helping others. This seemed to change as we got closer and closer to the end. She was getting this attitude of superiority and it wasn’t helping my self esteem. I had 10 years of retail management, which she told me wasn’t enough for the kind of jobs I was looking for. I’d have to set my sights lower and work my way up, according to her. A little encouragement would have been better medicine, but talking to her made me feel like I was going to be stuck forever. In a few weeks she’d be gone, thankfully, to a new job as a receptionist. Good riddance. The vacuum enabled me to step up into a leadership role at the end of United. And then the call came through – I was needed. Urgently. And now I’m here!
To my chagrin, my new work had CHYM FM on the speaker phones too. But as in the past, CHYM didn’t last and before too long, Dave was back. History repeats!
In this life, at least since 2018, we have learned to take nothing for granted. We treat every trip to the cottage like it’s the last, but I really didn’t expect to get back this late in the season.
With some Judas Priest on the stereo (Sad Wings of Destiny), we made one more uneventful trip up north. The weather forecast was not good, but the Friday was still lovely. We arrived early afternoon and I set up my laptop and speakers on the front porch for what really might be the last time in 2021. I did not waste a note of music. It was raining but the overhang kept me dry. Listening to song after song, I chose my Top 5 best album closing tracks for that night’s show. Finalized!
The best office you could want, rain or shine
I can’t remember the last time we made it to the lake this late in October. Friday I wore shorts. Saturday was another story….
I woke up early Saturday morning and went for a walk in the pitch black. It was wet from the rain but otherwise warm and dead quiet. A few hours later, the wind and rain picked up and Saturday became an “indoor day”.
I went down to the beach for a few moments to capture some video but I couldn’t make it further than the treeline. The wind was blasting the rain right through my clothes. It’s been many years since I’ve experienced that kind of weather. We battened down the hatches and prepared for a cold one. It was a good day for movies, music and toys. The heat went on and so did the long pants!
You can feel this picture
Sunday was the really interesting day. The reality was hitting me that it could possibly be months before we saw this place again. I was trying to really absorb the sounds, sights and feelings. I had two flashbacks, and they were intense.
The first happened in the early morning. I was cleaning the kitchen and put on some tunes to work to. I chose Rock and Roll Over by Kiss, as it had the classic Kiss vibe I wanted and strong cottage memories associated with it. The first time I heard Rock and Roll Over was there at the cottage – it was the last Kiss studio album I needed. I would have been about 15. As I was washing the dishes, singing and dancing to “Mr. Speed” I suddenly had the first flashback. I was in that very kitchen with my best friend Bob and I was a teenager again. We were doing the dishes and rocking out to Kiss. It was entirely in my imagination. We never washed the dishes to Kiss that I can think of. Yes the parents would usually ask us to help with the dishes, and any time we had company over, I conceded because I didn’t want to look like a spoiled brat. But we never did it with music playing, that I can remember. But we would have if we could.
It was such an intense feeling that I needed to stop what I was doing and take a breath. I could literally see us both, washing the dishes and rocking to Kiss. It probably never happened that way but my flashback didn’t care.
Once that intense experience had passed and the kitchen was clean, I went outside to wander and take some last pictures. My 49th season in this place. An awesome season and truly one of the very best. It was then that I had the second intense flashback.
49 years
I was walking around the side of the cottage, thinking about how awesome it was to be walking around shirtless in this paradise all summer. And then suddenly – I was. For a brief moment the sun was blasting my shirtless skin. And then it was over. It was like when Will Byers suddenly flashes into the Update Down on Stranger Things. In a blink it ended and was gone. I just enjoyed the experience. I’d like more flashbacks like this to happen. It’s all about the setting and the mindset.
Once Jen and I had finished packing, I was locking up and I noticed her at the end of the driveway staring at the lake. It is her favourite place in the world; she calls it her “safe place”. I joined her and asked if she wanted to take one more look around. We walked down to the windy beach one more time and just drank it all in. The sight of the churning lake, the sound of the crashing waves, and the feeling of the wind on our skin.
And that was it. With heavy heart we started the car and hit the road. If that was the end of the season, by God we had a good one! Some of the best tunes, meals, swimming, live shows and videos were had this year. An unforgettable summer, interviewing rock stars from the comfort of the front porch with Lake Huron before me. Top that, 2022.
RECORD STORE TALES #946: 30 Year-Old Novel CD Packaging
It’s not every day that I run into a CD packaging design that is new to me. From all sorts of digipacks, to variations on the classic jewel case, to the SACD and DVD Audio, I thought I had seen it all. Today I found one that is new to me. It belongs to a CD single by the Scottish band Gun, from their first album Taking on the World. That dates the single to over 30 years ago, so it’s surprising I haven’t seen anything like it before.
This is how it happened. I was looking for a specific Metallica single (“The Unnamed Feeling”) to begin completing my St. Anger collection. (I still need the Australian version with unique Australian live tracks, and an annoying version with a remix on it.) Because I don’t like to buy just one thing, I checked other discs that the seller was offering. I chose a 1994 Jackyl single for “Push Comes to Shove”, and the Gun single. It was the title track from Taking on the World, a brilliant song itself, backed by a 12″ mix of their other big single “Better Days” and a non-album cover of Thin Lizzy’s “Don’t Believe a Word”. The singles arrived in the mail last week and now I’m getting around to listening.
The Gun single comes in a regular thin cardboard sleeve, like many typical CD singles. Here’s where it gets interesting. I popped out the disc, and what should I find inside? Not the usual 5″ single, no. This is a 3″ single, much less common.
I have seen 3″ singles come in four different kinds of cases before.
4. Finally and least interestingly…just a regular 5″ CD single jewel case.
The Gun CD, released on A&M Records in 1990, is now the fifth storage system I’m found for the 3″ disc. From inside the regular 5″ cardboard sleeve came a 3″ CD attached to a white plastic tray. I have never seen one like it before. It is specifically designed to hold 3″ discs, and has a three-pronged center to grasp the CD securely.
Isn’t it fascinating that after almost four decades of collecting music over different formats, that I just found a packaging design that I’ve never encountered in my travels? I spent 12 years in a used CD store and this is the first 3″ white plastic tray I’ve ever seen. Thank you Discogs!
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